Climax: Studio scale is â??meaningless without qualityâ??

Climax’s CEO Karl Jeffrey and head of production Simon Gardner have been talking to Develop about the decision to drastically downsize their studio.

“After we sold Climax Racing in 2006, we had a whole new philosophy,” revealed Jeffrey. “You know the old multi-studio British developer model where everything is heavy iron and scale is all-important? Well, we’d come to the realisation that scale is meaningless without quality, and we’d prefer to make a smaller number of very good games.”

At its largest Climax, which has created a number of popular games, including the MotoGP series, employed 450 people and owned several studios in the UK. “We had a situation where we were taking in work because we needed keep the machine fed,” explained Gardner.

“The decisions we were making were driven by business and financial needs, not by the singular objective of trying to make the best games,” added Jeffrey. “I think we’ve come a long way. The company is a lot smaller, with just under 100 people. Over 50 per cent of our man months are done outside of the company, whether by freelancers or classic outsourcing.”

Now Climax has pledged to focus on making better games with a smaller team, as opposed to ‘being a machine to maintain the employment of development staff’.

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